Michael Collins teaches Civil Procedure, Federal Courts, Conflict of Laws and Evidence. Before coming to UVA, where he is currently the Joseph M. Hartfield Professor of Law and the Class of 1948 Professor of Scholarly Research in Law, Collins taught at Tulane Law School, where he was the Robert A. Ainsworth Professor of Law.

Prior to attending law school, Collins earned a graduate degree in classical languages and literature and an undergraduate degree in history and classics. After law school, he practiced commercial and employment law in Los Angeles, practiced civil rights law in New Orleans, and was a Bigelow Fellow at the University of Chicago Law School. He has also been a visiting professor at Boston University, George Washington, Ohio State and Richmond. While at Tulane, he was a three-time recipient of the law school's distinguished teaching award. And in 2013, he was a recipient of the University of Virginia's All-University Teaching Award.

Collins’ research interests lie in the areas of federal courts, procedure and legal history. His recently published works include the casebook Transnational Civil Litigation (with Joachim Zekoll and George Rutherglen), an article on the obligation of state courts to entertain sister-state claims (with Ann Woolhandler) and an article titled "Reconstructing Murdock v. Memphis." His writings have appeared in the California, Columbia, Emory, Georgetown and Virginia law reviews. He has also co-authored casebooks on federal jurisdiction and on first-year civil procedure, and he has published a handbook on constitutional tort litigation.